Celebrating 24 Years of content creation

Today we’re celebrating our 24th anniversary as content creators—yay!

As usual, we arrived at the date in a bit of a rush and only managed to put together this blog post as our form of celebration (though, to be fair, it is a long one).

The truth is, this is usually our busiest period of the year. As autumn begins, we feel renewed and ready to take on new projects. We’re also working steadily toward releasing another set before the end of the year—so stay tuned! These days are full, busy, and very much focused on getting things done.

A year of Firsts

The past year has been, more than anything else, a creative rebirth for us.
It was also a year of firsts.

Our website launched on December 20th, 2024, and even though it wasn’t our first website, it had been a long time since we’d had an online place to call our home sweet home. We finally created a proper logotype for Aeon Soul, incorporating our lifelong symbol—right at its heart.
We launched our first ever Newsletter and are quite happy with the response (thank you so much for the interest!).
We also resumed offering freebies—our original gateway into becoming vendors. While we had hoped to be more prolific, we’ve already shared a couple of lovely pieces, with more in the pipeline.

And, of course, for the first time, we beganpublishing independently.

Our first indie product was released on October 31st, but the decision itself was made back in June. Since then, we’ve been building steadily: the website, the newsletter, exclusive freebies, and this very blog.

Going indie has made us fall in love with our work all over again. We’ve been working hard to build Aeon Soul, and we want to keep moving forward, more productive and more inspired than ever.

The last 12 months of releases

Looking back on the past year, we’re proud of what we released and excited about the year ahead. We’re already planning the next wave of content to be as varied as possible, with both big and small projects in the works.

Last year—on December 18th, no less—we released Urban Noise Hz, Urban Noise FM, and Customize for Urban Noise. This was a huge accomplishment for us. That particular group of products went through many iterations and took a significant amount of time and effort to complete, making their release especially meaningful.

Following that, we released Artful Poses, Astratech Outfit, Walking with Attitude, and Skin Effects: Wasteland—our largest and longest project in the past few years. Then came A’Nhys Harmony, a new release in the A’Nhys series, which we’re especially fond of and can’t wait to expand further.
We also released Post-apocalyptic City Vibes, and we’re not finished with that post-apocalyptic mini-world. Additional releases included Mon Flair Poses, Man of Substance Poses (some long-overdue love for the guys), Urban Noise dB, Decibel Hoodie, Hood Up Style, Tough Styles for Urban Noise—our very first indie release—and Metro Straps.

Products Highs and Lows
The Urban Noise releases are the ones we’re most proud of, largely because of what they represent for us (we even wrote a blog post about it 🙂). This ongoing series is something we’ve been building over the past few years, and Urban Noise in particular embodies the Aeon Soul spirit: urban fashion that’s stylish, dynamic, and has something to say.

We also loved releasing Metro Straps. It had been a long time since we’d put out something a bit edgier, and it turned out to be a great set for mix-and-match styling—something that’s near and dear to us.

A’Nhys Harmony, part of the A’Nhys series, was another highlight. We’re fond of this super-sexy fantasy line, built around the same ring-and-fabric-strip mesh concept, and we’re excited to continue expanding it.

On the lower side, while we genuinely love Skin Effects: Wasteland, it was by far the most draining project we’ve tackled in the past few years. When we decided to release it, we assumed it wouldn’t take long since it was about 95% complete. That assumption was… wrong. The final stages of production felt never-ending, with weeks spent fine-tuning, packing, testing, and fixing.
A word of advice to ourselves (and maybe others): never create a product with hundreds of options for four different characters. It’s madness. We’re just glad we managed to keep our sanity.
That said, it is a genuinely cool set of post-apocalyptic skin effects—and we use it all the time, so there’s that. We still have a few unreleased options, but whether we’ll find the bravery to tackle them remains to be seen.

In terms of poses, we offered a good variety we like to range from practical, everyday poses to stylish and super-stylish ones. Admittedly, we didn’t release anything particularly dynamic this year, but some intriguing fighting poses are coming soon.

We’re going to be more productive in the coming year as we don’t have as many time-consuming projects lined up (well… there is one, but we’ll see), which should allow us to focus more on new concepts. We’d love to explore a wider range of styles and, hopefully—finally—get back into character work.

What about Art?
Well, since expanding our presence to DeviantArt and RenderHub we’ve maintained a fairly full schedule for art creation and posting—but in truth, finding the time has been challenging. We planned to post at least twice a week, especially right after a release, but we haven’t quite managed to keep up with that pace.

We want to create high-quality, meaningful art and it takes time.
We have had some very time-consuming releases in the past year, so hopefully the coming months will allow for a better rhythm.

24 years, eh?

It’s quite a long time. In the beginning, we constantly wondered how long this kind of business could last. Fortunately, it has lasted far longer than we ever expected—though the past few years have been challenging, to put it mildly.

Throughout all these years, what has truly kept us going is our ability to infuse creativity into both our products and promotional work, along with a constant pursuit of the highest possible quality. We’re deeply grateful to everyone who supports us, and we feel a responsibility to offer real value for the money people spend on our creations.
That’s also why we always strive to make our products as accessible as possible—even when they include many features—and why we keep pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved with the tools available.

Non-digital creativity

As everyone eventually realizes, time waits for no one. That’s why, even with the added workload of going indie, we decided to pull a couple of projects out of the “dream drawer” and turn them into reality.

The first Aeon Soul Merch!
We created our first Aeon Soul merchandise: a pair of embroidered baseball hats featuring our logo and logotype, which we proudly wore throughout the summer. They were produced through Printful, and we’re impressed by the quality and overall look.
We also designed and printed a couple of all-over print T-shirts based on our Customize designs—and they turned out amazing. We’ll be sharing photos asap.

Beyond that, we developed a small series of pins and stickers based on our designs. This is a passion side project that we plan to expand gradually, time permitting. We’ve already taken the first concrete steps, and just a few days ago we finally uploaded everything to our Etsy store (more on that soon!).

More extensively we also created a series of pins (and stickers) based on our designs. This is a small side business that we intend to be expanding bit by bit (time permitting), but we already took the first few steps and just a few days ago finally uploaded everything on our Etsy store (we’ll share about this soon!).

Truth be told, we’ve always wanted to open an Etsy shop of some kind—given the number of hobbies we have—and it feels great to finally make it happen. Both the Etsy store and the related Instagram account aren’t quite as polished as we’d like yet, but considering the limited time we can devote to them, they’re in a good place. Most importantly, we love the pins and stickers we’ve made so far—and we wear them all the time.

Nerding out a bit

Games
We’ve always shared a deep passion for games, since the early 2000s. In fact, the last posts on our DeviantArt blog—before we stepped away from the platform for a few years—were reports from our days at E3. Exchanging ideas with other Daz Studio users who are also passionate about games has always been stimulating and inspiring.
ooking back, we’re really glad we managed to attend E3 twice before everything moved online. We also attended Gamescom in Cologne twice—also great experiences, if a bit more chaotic, as we went as members of the general public (attendance there is huge).

As gaming grew into a massive industry, Big Gaming increasingly focused on maximizing profits rather than delivering the most enjoyable experiences. Since the mid-2010s, many large companies have leaned heavily into monetization, but fortunately the indie scene has grown just as strongly—if not more so. While the COVID period took a toll on the industry, Larian Studios still delivered the outstanding Baldur’s Gate 3, and more recently Sandfall Interactive earned acclaim and awards with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

On the other hand, we definitely stopped playing Destiny 2—our most-played game ever—as the grind was too much and the enjoyment too little. It’s a real shame, because gameplay-wise it’s still one of our favorites.

More recently, we’ve been playing Marvel Rivals since launch and are still having a great time. It’s a solid game, and the quantity and quality of content being released is staggering. Sometimes we wish we could be as productive as that team—then again, we suspect there are more than two people working on it :).
We usually run Vanguard + Strategist or Vanguard + Duelist comps, which makes for some solid team play (yes, we’re currently maining Gambit and Rogue). And yes, we have splurged a bit on costumes—but so much content can be earned simply by playing that it feels fair. For a free-to-play title, it’s one of the most generous and balanced experiences we’ve encountered, and we’re happy to support development of that quality.

We also loved RoboCop: Rogue City and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle—though according to Steam, my most-played game is actually Substance Painter! We’ve also spent plenty of time with smaller titles we love, especially escape room and mystery games.

Finally, we do have our own gaming projects tucked away in that famous drawer. Who knows—now that we’re better able to gauge and manage our time, we might start with something small and see where it leads. There have never been as many accessible tools as there are today, so we’re definitely curious to explore what’s out there in the maker space.

Hardware
Speaking of computers—and since we’re strictly PC gamers at this point—we were hoping to get our hands on an RTX 5090 Founders Edition, but that’s proving nearly impossible. Anything readily available is wildly overpriced, and chasing one at this point feels a bit like hunting a chimera (not that we’d know what to do with a chimera anyway).

Comics
We originally started creating Poser content because we wanted to render our own comic book stories. Nothing has come of that just yet, but we do have plans for a small, cute comic strip next year. We’re committed to pulling more ideas out of the “dreams drawer” and into the real world, and this might be just the thing.

Books
Well, after a long journey we finished reading the Wheel of Time saga and what a ride!
Haven’t watched the tv series yet and probably will not, doesn’t feel like it’s a good match for us, but we did re-watch Fawlty Towers for the n-th time, because we need some Brit comedy and especially Monthy Pythons in our year.

After a long journey, we finally finished reading The Wheel of Time saga—and what a ride it was. We haven’t watched the TV series yet and probably won’t; it doesn’t quite feel like a good fit for us.

That said, we did rewatch Fawlty Towers for the nth time, because we always need some British comedy in our lives—especially Monty Python.

On a more personal note, we also enjoy writing RPG systems. Our most ambitious project to date is Aeon Seer, an expansive setting located in our own Milky Way Galaxy (let’s be honest, Andromeda got the cooler name). We also have a D&D world setting called Faerûn 1900, a more advanced reinterpretation of the Forgotten Realms with a fine-tuned playing system.

Looking forward to the future!

It’s been a very busy—often hectic—year, and we’re deeply grateful to everyone who supports us and allows us to follow our creative calling. Our hope is always to offer tools that inspire others’ creativity and artistic expression.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask—there’s only so much one can fit into a blog post (even a very long one).

Ad Majora!
Aeon Soul